Weekday Numbers | Jul 17 - 20 | Wednesday | 4.74M M:I - DEAD RECKONING I | 4.72M SOUND OF FREEDOM

[baumer]

6 minutes ago, CloneWars said:

They should have never called DR part 1. That was a dumb idea. Twilight and Hunger Games showed that didn't work. IW and EG prove different titles work better. Also, the placement was bad. Barbenheimer is going to kill next week 

 

It did work for Twilight and it worked for Harry Potter as well. Twilight was one of the most consistent grossing series of films out of any franchise

 

Breaking Dawn part 1 and breaking Dawn part 2 are the two highest grossing films in the series.

[Ezen Baklattan]

I'm still not convinced Sound of Freedom, which undeniably hot a cultural zeitgeist, is a watershed moment for conservative/heartland appealing film or just a lightning in a bottle moment when movies like God's Not Dead and Passion of the Christ have been so difficult to replicate. There's a reason each of GND's sequels have gone down steadily, and even Unplanned, one of the most explicitly right wing films of the last ten years, couldn't make it past $20m.

 

If something more explicitly ideological in its text (versus subtext) beyond just "save the children!" which is frankly a universal appeal. Sound of Freedom is blowing past expectations, sure, but there's a reason movies like American Sniper make $350m and Thank You For Your Service don't even hit double digits.

[wildphantom]

Universal dodged a bullet not calling the latest Furious:

 

Fast X - Part 1

 

Which ironically would have been the most appropriate title for what the movie is. 

[von Kenni]

4 minutes ago, Ezen Baklattan said:

I'm still not convinced Sound of Freedom, which undeniably hot a cultural zeitgeist, is a watershed moment for conservative/heartland appealing film or just a lightning in a bottle moment when movies like God's Not Dead and Passion of the Christ have been so difficult to replicate. There's a reason each of GND's sequels have gone down steadily, and even Unplanned, one of the most explicitly right wing films of the last ten years, couldn't make it past $20m.

 

If something more explicitly ideological in its text (versus subtext) beyond just "save the children!" which is frankly a universal appeal. Sound of Freedom is blowing past expectations, sure, but there's a reason movies like American Sniper make $350m and Thank You For Your Service don't even hit double digits.

 

I mean isn't a cause or theme always secondary and if the movie is good as a movie primary?

 

I.e. making good films is tough and great ones even tougher. That defines the long-term sustainable success. If there is a theme attached to the great film, it can amplify but if the film itself is crab, not even the noblest cause or theme will much save it.

[baumer]

When I left the theater after seeing sound of freedom, there were men in the bathroom wiping away tears and I was one of them. I can't say the entire theater was in tears but there are a lot of red eyes and sniffles walking out of the theater.

 

Why do I mention this? Because whether or not a film is good is subjective. But if a film gets inside of you and makes you feel emotions so much to the point that you have to let them out, then that at least means the film did, at least in this case, what it was intended to do.

[Jonwo]

25 minutes ago, DAJK said:

19 x 20 would be 380M domestic. No chance.

 

And to add, so that I don’t have to make 2 posts about the same subject, isn’t the PiF money going into a pot for the studio, where it stays until someone requests a ticket, then the money from that pot buys a ticket and that’s when it’s counted to the box office? That sorta makes sense to me, and is probably what the studio would want to do anyway, because they keep any extra $ instead of having to share it with theaters, which is why I don’t think they’re just funneling this $ into buying out empty auditoriums; it’s throwing money away.

This is why I think SOF isn't likely to see similar success OS because the PIF scheme would be difficult to replicate when you're dealing with multiple local distributors. 

[wildphantom]

I really want to see SOF. 

Still no sign of a U.K. release date.
 

Probably hasn’t been picked up by any distributors internationally. Either that, or there’s some dealing going on as the buzz from the States is absolutely stirring more foreign interest in it than it would otherwise have had. 

[TwoMisfits]

8 minutes ago, baumer said:

When I left the theater after seeing sound of freedom, there were men in the bathroom wiping away tears and I was one of them. I can't say the entire theater was in tears but there are a lot of red eyes and sniffles walking out of the theater.

 

Why do I mention this? Because whether or not a film is good is subjective. But if a film gets inside of you and makes you feel emotions so much to the point that you have to let them out, then that at least means the film did, at least in this case, what it was intended to do.

 

It's like Titanic...it's a great movie, but if you were a girl with a boyfriend watching that movie in 1997, it's an epic movie in all senses, and you might still have it ranked as the #1 movie of all time, b/c what something is combined with what something makes you feel is the jackpot for making a homerun movie...Titanic was well made, well acted, and grand in scope and story, so it was always a great movie...but it was also an example of the ultimate sacrifice for love that just gets you in the "feels" every time...it's literally one of the few movies to make me cry, and I cried for hours after my 1st watch, so much the boyfriend thought there was something wrong.

 

I still cry for that movie...thus, feels plus movie quality equals greatness...and WOM that goes bigger than you can imagine.

 

I told baumer after I saw SoF that $100M was in the bag, and it could do a lot more - just how much more was always gonna be the question b/c it's an uncharted type of release.  While SoF may not have been the movie quality of Titanic, it did have the gut punch that movie had, and people were feeling it, and they were gonna want others to watch and know, just so they could talk about it.  

Edited July 18, 2023 by TwoMisfits

[baumer]

3 minutes ago, Jonwo said:

This is why I think SOF isn't likely to see similar success OS because the PIF scheme would be difficult to replicate when you're dealing with multiple local distributors. 

 

The film has grossed 85 million now and it has 5 million in pay it forward. It's hardly the reason why it's made so much money. It's a contributing factor no doubt but it's not the main reason or even a secondary reason.

[TwoMisfits]

Just now, baumer said:

 

The film has grossed 85 million now and it has 5 million in pay it forward. It's hardly the reason why it's made so much money. It's a contributing factor no doubt but it's not the main reason or even a secondary reason.

 

At this point, Pay it Forward did its job - it got the movie rolling and got enough box office to start the snowball.  Now, the snowball is in full effect which is why all Pay It Forward funds are now being put towards Anti-Trafficking group fundraisers 1st...b/c now, everyone WANTS to see it and WILL pay.

[TomThomas]

35 minutes ago, AniNate said:

 

A Cinemascore though.

 

It's more a Cars/Brave kind of agreeable mid that parents and kids don't have much issue with as opposed to Lightyear which just came off as dull.

Yeah, that's why its run is so surprising. Agreeable mid usually doesn't have this kind of staying power, or in this case outright refusal to die after very low opening weekend.

[TomThomas]

42 minutes ago, LegionWrex said:

It's doing very well with specific audiences which is sometimes all you need.

I guess so.

[baumer]

20 minutes ago, TwoMisfits said:

 

It's like Titanic...it's a great movie, but if you were a girl with a boyfriend watching that movie in 1997, it's an epic movie in all senses, and you might still have it ranked as the #1 movie of all time, b/c what something is combined with what something makes you feel is the jackpot for making a homerun movie...Titanic was well made, well acted, and grand in scope and story, so it was always a great movie...but it was also an example of the ultimate sacrifice for love that just gets you in the "feels" every time...it's literally one of the few movies to make me cry, and I cried for hours after my 1st watch, so much the boyfriend thought there was something wrong.

 

I still cry for that movie...thus, feels plus movie equals greatness...and WOM that goes bigger than you can imagine.

 

I told baumer after I saw SoF that $100M was in the bag, and it could do a lot more - just how much more was always gonna be the question b/c it's an uncharted type of release.  While SoF may not have been the movie quality of Titanic, it did have the gut punch that movie had, and people were feeling it, and they were gonna want others to watch and know, just so they could talk about it.  

 

All right this post is going to sound ridiculously macho and maybe a bit chauvinistic and sexist and probably kind of stupid but it needs to sound that way to hammer home my point.

 

I know that women were the driving force of titanic. I acknowledge it I admit it and it's just the way it is. But when I saw Titanic for the first time I saw it with my girlfriend and then the second time I saw it I saw it with my best friend. My best friend and I used to go to the gym together. We were those 20-year-old idiots who would scream at each other to do one more bench press one more curl and all that stereotypical bullshit. When him and I were not dating women we would go to bars and try to pick them up. We were the quintessential stereotypical manly man back in the day.

 

When him and I saw Titanic together, this being my second time and it being his second time, we both bawled our eyes out in the movie theater. So much so that we couldn't even look at each other. We even left one seat in between us to put our popcorn and our drinks. And so there was enough separation between us that we could avoid eye contact.

 

The next day we went to the mall and we bought the Titanic soundtrack. We ended up cruising up and down the downtown streets on a snowy January night in 1998 listening to the soundtrack together and not talking. We both started shedding tears while driving together listening to the soundtrack.

 

Titanic may have been a film that women obsessed over but any man who tells you that they didn't get emotional in it in my opinion is lying. You can't watch that film and not feel the emotions that the passengers are going through. Even if for some reason you didn't take to the love story, you had other incredibly emotion-inducing scenes like bthe old couple on the bed together, the mother and the daughter where she says that they're just going to let some of the other passengers out first and then it will be their turn, the bodies in the ocean including the Frozen baby and the list goes on and on.

 

I was an emotional wreck when I saw sound of freedom. But the first three times I saw Titanic it brought emotions out of me that I didn't even know existed.

 

I don't think sound of freedom is going to have that kind of run and I'm not talking about 600 million I'm just saying something silly like a 15 multiplier. But it could be the first film that I've seen since 1998 that brought those deep buried and primal emotions.

 

I'm on the 200 train. Let's see if we can get there.

[kayumanggi]

 

[Valonqar]

3 hours ago, SchumacherFTW said:

Dune was smart and didn't shout part 1 until you were already in the theater, same as IT

 

Ah good point!

[kayumanggi]

 

[M37]

3 hours ago, SchumacherFTW said:

Dune was smart and didn't shout part 1 until you were already in the theater, same as IT

And ATSV 

[The Dark Alfred]

Part 1 title didn't seem to hurt the film outside the US. So I don't buy that excuse. It's simply a bad release date and SoF ate up tons of its demo. What kinds of Tuesday increase are we expecting? SoF went down last week.

[ringedmortality]

Why does Sound of Freedom have a lot of weird stans here lol

[Jonwo]

Just now, ringedmortality said:

Why does Sound of Freedom have a lot of weird stans here lol

I know why couldn't possibly comment. 😉